Horse Racing - The Daily Double

( Originally Published mid 1950's )

The ancient who said there are exceptions to every -vle could not have been thinking of horse racing-because if you start that stuff in handicapping, you soon will find yourself lost in a sea of indecision.

There are only two exceptions to our hard-and-fast rules for selecting maximum investment plays: If one of the horses involved appears to have an overpowering ad vantage, we occasionally may take him on to complete a Daily Double play where no regular selection is available. Or we may shade secondary requirements on him a trifle if he otherwise qualifies as a "Best Bet" type.

We do not mean to take on a borderline case just because he misses qualifying by one day or one pound, etc. He also must have added values in such cases.

One of the times when the race-goer probably will want to make an exception will be when he is trying to pick a daily double. For the benefit of beginners, in the daily double you try to select the winners of bath the first and second races before the program starts. You need buy only one ticket, but both of your horses have to win in order for you to collect.

As a beginner soon will realize, this is most difficult because the first two races generally feature the cheapest horses on the grounds-maidens, nonwinners of a race in several months, two-year-olds, etc.

Therefore, since these cheapsters generally do not have enough on the ball to qualify under any regular set of rules, you sometimes have to make an exception in one of the two races in order to get a daily double play.

Here is an example of a case where you would be justified in making such a selection:

We already had our selection in the first race that day and in the second race our attention was attracted to this one when her trainer, apparently convinced he had a good chance to win, switched to a better apprentice jockey, R. Ussery.

Ordinarily you might have passed this second race because none of the 11 steeds that went to the post had won in its last 8 starts-the race was for horses that hadn't won in 4 months. But in scanning such a race to complete a daily double you may sneak one in that doesn't need much consistency.

So in looking to complete your daily double you could not overlook this mare Anamia, who in a race only three days previously, in a shorter race and carrying more weight, had started last, passed almost every horse in the race and lost all the money by only a neck.

Since none of Anamia's rivals today could qualify on the class requirement due to the conditions of the race (for recent nonwinners), and since the mare apparently would have been a sure winner of her last race if the distance and weight had been the same as today, you would have to take her as your selection here.

To make her look even better, Anamia qualified two ways on the late action requirement, having had 2 races in the last 10 days and 3 races in the last 13 days. She also had 4 races in the last 19 days. So we shade the class requirement on her a trifle, but you can do this only under unusual circumstances, where tremendous power in several places is allowed to compensate for a near-miss in just one department.

Rissan won the first race and paid $11.60, Anamia took the second race at $12.40, and the Daily Double, which we count as a separate play, would have returned us $75.80 for a two-dollar ticket, or $379.00 for a $10 ticket if your investment fund happened to warrant a bet of that size. Anamia had so many unusual points in her favor, especially the switch to a red-hot apprentice jockey, that she rated as a major investment play although it is almost impossible to draw up definite rules to cover such contingencies.

It is possible, however, to draw up a simple rule where you want to play a Daily Double on a moderate investment scale. Simply shade your regular rules a bit and here you are:

Take a horse that in its last race gained in the stretch and finished in the money at today's class or higher, and also has had 2 races in the past 18 days or less.

Such horses also should qualify on the 10 general rules in the back of the book.

The usual procedure in other borderline cases also is to reduce your wager to the amount of a moderate investment. How and when this should be done will be described in the next few chapters.